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The newsletter from May

Whipper snippers and mowers: The number 1 enemy of young trees everywhere!

Even the most careful of gardeners can nick the tender bark of a young tree. Because the vital channels that transport nutrients in a tree lie just under the bark, these wounds are more serious than you might think. And if the wound encircles the tree, in all likelihood, it will be fatal.

What to do? Apply a 2 – 3 inch layer of mulch around the base of the tree, and extend it out as far as you can- even to the drip-line. If you add a thin layer of compost underneath the mulch, this will improve the soil structure and help add micro-nutrients over time.

We have put up stakes and small signs to help prevent people from damaging the trees while mowing the grass.

Here’s your chance to make a lasting contribution to your neighbourhood by adding a Sesquicentennial native tree to your yard. NeighbourWoods, in partnership with Green Legacy, Little Tree and four local arborists, is pilot testing a new and innovative program to boost the number of trees in our community.
Here’s how it works:
Residents who hire one of the participating arborists to cut down a tree – for example a dying Ash – will be offered one free replacement. Customers have 2 options:
1) A 3-4-foot paper birch, white spruce or sugar maple provided by Green Legacy. Your arborist can recommend which species is best suited to your site AND will even plant it for you.
2) For customers who prefer a bigger tree, a coupon for 15% off a tree purchased from Little Tree Garden Market. Little Tree offers a delivery and planting service.

Participating arborists are:
Arborite Tree Care 519-993-3340
Baum Tree Care 226-383-2286
CREO Concepts Inc. 519-843-2087
Full Circle Tree Service 519-827-9408
MW Tree Service 519-831-9848
Out of Your Tree Care 226-820-3611
If you are interested in taking advantage of this program, call soon because this offer is good until June 30 or until the trees are gone.

If this new idea catches on, perhaps it can become a program offered in the future – and even replicated in other communities in Ontario.

For more information about NeighbourWoods or this Program, please contact Toni Ellis, Coordinator, at 519-362-9469 or by email at neighbourwoods@eloraenvironmentcentre.ca

Once again a team of volunteers together with our summer students will be working in the field collecting data from the trees in Elora and Fergus. Again this year we will be re-visiting street blocks we inspected in 2010, as well as tackling fresh blocks. Not only do we gather data about our trees – such as their health, diversity, and location – but this is an excellent opportunity to meet with homeowners to talk about their trees, help answer questions, and of course sing the praises of their trees. This year, we are going high-tech by inputting data into our new tablet, instead using paper and clipboards!

Our newest volunteer program is about to get underway. The volunteers have been trained by arborist Chris Morrison this past week and are ready to hit the street of Fergus and Elora and prune some trees!

Many of you will be familiar with our Tree Inventory program, but this year we decided to turn things up a notch and introduce a pilot project – which has only been organized once before in Thunder Bay – Citizen Pruners.

The goal of Citizen Pruners is to educate a group of volunteers on how to properly prune and maintain a tree. Over the years, NeighbourWoods has planted many trees in our community, but tree care does not stop there. It is extremely important to prune young trees – before small problems grow into bigger problems; and want our trees to last as long as possible in our urban environment. So, that means pruning is a necessity!

Our group of volunteers spent two nights last week learning about tree anatomy and proper pruning technique with arborist Chris Morrison; and with one more field-training night, the eve of pruning is upon us!

So, throughout the months of June and July, a team of 20 volunteers and 4 arborists will be going around Fergus and Elora, wearing orange t-shirts and pruning the young trees – which will help support their healthy growth in the future.

Growing Urban Orchards

In partnership with Guelph Community Orchard Project and The Elora Environment Centre, we are excited to join Susan Poizner, an urban orchardist and the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards, as she guides us through fruit tree care. You will learn the techniques for dormant tree pruning (versus summer pruning when the tree is actively growing). Dormant pruning, done annually, helps you improve tree health, spur healthy growth and helps your tree develop a structure that will support a robust harvest.

Date: Saturday April 29thTime: 10:00am – 12:00pmWhere:Guelph Community Orchard Project located at Harcourt Memorial United Church – 87 Dean Ave, Guelph, ON N1G 1L3Bring: Notebook and pen and weather appropriate clothing as we will be working outside in rain or shine.

NeighbourWoods Spring Tree Talk

Join us to learn about Citytrees – an innovative tool that pinpoints individual trees and their attributes. Using this mobile friendly interactive map, anyone will be able to find out the species, health and environmental benefits of individual trees. As well, data can be aggregated to provide ”big picture” information such as, total number of sugar maples. Citytrees will significantly enhance the educational value of our tree inventory.

For more information about the NeighbourWoods tree inventory, please visit neighbourwoods@eloraenvironmentcentre.ca

About our speaker: Dr Millward is an Associate Professor of Geography at Ryerson University and resident of Guelph. He has played a central role in the development and pilot testing of Citytrees.

NeighbourWoods Upcoming Tree Talk:

Supporting a Thriving Forest: Strategies for Building your Network

Date: Thursday February 9, 2017Time: 7:30 – 9 pmLocation: Elora Centre for the Arts (75 Melville St. Elora) in the Harris RoomCost: $5 or free for members

Please join us for our Winter Tree Talk with Maria Legault, Communications Coordinator with Ontario’s Back to Nature Network*.

As we develop greater insight on the complex challenges facing our world, and as funding dollars shrink, working together grows all the more important. Ontario’s Back to Nature Network is one organization building bonds between organizations sharing the common mission to connect children and families with nature.

Come and be inspired with reflections and tools to build your network around a shared purpose with nature at its core.

*The Back to Nature Network is a collaborative of organizations (education, health, planning, early child development, environmental stewardship, and active healthy living) working to build a world where all children have access to nature within walking distance of their homes and regular opportunities to spend meaningful time in it. The network produces materials and acts as an information hub to support organizations working to connect children and families with nature.

NeighbourWoods Upcoming Tree Talk:An Ounce of Prevention: Small Steps To Stop The Next BIG Invasive Species

Date: Thursday November 3, 2016Time: 7:30 – 9 pmLocation: Elora Centre for the Arts (75 Melville St. Elora) in the Harris RoomCost: $5 or free for members

Please join as out first Tree Talk of the season. The Ontario Invasive Plant Council’s Colin Cassin will be outlining the Early Detection & Rapid Response Network of Ontario, a tool used to help various levels of government and citizen scientists collaborate to reduce the impact of new invasive species. This program offers a critical second defence against the establishment of invasive populations. EDRR increases the likelihood that localized invasive populations will be found, contained, and eradicated before they become widely established. EDRR can slow range expansion, and avoid the need for costly long-term control efforts.

About the speaker: Colin is the Project Liaison at the OIPC and spends most of his time coordinating the Early Detection and Rapid Response Network for Ontario. Colin joined the OIPC staff in the summer of 2015, after completing his masters at University of Toronto. His past research and invasive plant control experience also includes a range of aquatic and terrestrial invasive species. If you have 8-10 hours to spare, ask him about invasive earthworms and their impacts on plant community diversity. Colin is a resident of Peterborough and we appreciate him taking the trip to Centre Wellington.

Korea is a mysterious country. Once one of the poorest countries in the 1960s has achieved an economic miracle, now chasing Canada as the 11th largest economy. Among some uplifting stories that I heard from my parents, my favourite is the Gold Collection movement that saved the country out of the Asian economic crisis in 1997. My mother donated her wedding ring and golden charms – a common gift for the one-year celebration of the baby’s birth – to the government while my father took a salary cut to help his company to stay competitive in the exports scene. I would not have had the privilege to grow up in Canada without the personal sacrifice that my parents generational made for the country.

Our nature is also on the brink of collapse, but we have not discovered the way to convince people to share such burden. Dumping more scientific facts and jargons have only frustrated people while the doom-and-gloom scenarios have turned people away from the conversation. Now, the climate change is called with various nicknames such as a hoax, cult, religion or conspiracy. Expressing love for the environment is for the hippies. You could easily avoid the unwanted conversation with the magic word called the environment.

What would be the solution to our pressing issues against the climate change? Could optimistic messages work since negative messages have been ineffective? Don’t we turn ourselves to optimistic stories because we are surrounded by negative news all the time? What about financial incentive because money matters to all of us? How about using marketing techniques and social media? Social marketing has been very effective in reducing alcohol consumption and eliminating drug use. What about the community-level grassroots approach? Farmers market had a decade of explosive growths. To my surprise, all of these approaches have been experimented in the realm of climate change and proven to be rather unsuccessful.

It seems like we are running out of options. Then, what could be our next move? Nobody knows the clear answer for this question, but we could certainly learn something from the Gold Collection Movement. Neither the government nor organization was able to save the country. It was the power of ordinary people who were willing to make the sacrifice and share the burden that helped save the nation from the verge of bankruptcy. Perhaps, we are waiting for the simple nudge to start the environmental miracle.